by Eddie Vegger

Created on: July 26, 2011   Last Updated: July 28, 2011

The worst sick day excuses I have come across in my professional career have ironic twists to them. 

The first one that comes to mind was a person who had called in sick on an extended disability leave because of an injury to his back.  His supervisor attempted to contact him by phone to obtain some paperwork necessary to continue his extended sick leave.  When the employee didn't respond by phone, the supervisor decided to go to his house to see him and have him sign the paperwork there.   When the supervisor arrived at the employee's house, the employee was shoveling rocks in to a wheelbarrow.  The supervisor had the employee sign the paperwork for his extended leave, then went back to his office to prepare paperwork for the employees termination.

Another situation involved an employee who was unhappy with the amount of administrative support he was getting at work.  When he came to work one day and found that he didn't have the support he thought he deserved, he walked off the job and then called in sick a few hours later.  He claimed that he was emotionally distraught due to the stress caused by him not getting the support he needed.  The employer called it job abandonment and fired the employee.

One employee called in sick, but failed to realize that the announcer at the Baseball Stadium he was at could be heard clearly over his cell phone message.  This employee kept his job, but he was written up for abuse of his sick leave and his leave for the baseball day was changed to annual leave.

The next example of a bad sick day excuse was an employee that claimed that she didn't abuse the sick leave policy because she always had sick leave left over.  Her supervisor asked the employee if she thought her absences showed a pattern of any kind.  The employee said she did not know of a pattern.  The supervisor produced a spreadsheet that showed that the employee had missed every other Tuesday for the past five years.  The supervisor also pointed out to the employee that the missed Tuesdays had always followed a payday the preceding day.  When the employee admitted to a habit of tying one on every payday evening, the employer referred her to the company's Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) to be evaluated for Alcohol Addiction. 

The final bad sick day example was a CPA who had a perfect attendance record from May through December, but seemed to miss an inordinate amount of days from January through April.  When the employee was confronted by his Manager about this pattern, he offered that the pressure of the approach of Tax season manifested itself by making the employee increasingly ill over the course of the months preceding April 15th.  When the day of tax reckoning finally presented itself, this poor nervous accountant was so ill that he required constant bed-rest.  This manager also referred the employee to the organization's EAP to talk to a career counselor about a job change. 

Learn more about this author, Eddie Vegger.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.